The collection contains the records of the United Paperworkers International Union as well as their predecessors including the International Brotherhood of Papermakers; United Paperworkers of America; United Papermakers and Paperworkers; and the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers.
By February 1988 members of of United Paperworkers International Union Local 14 of Jay, Maine, had been on strike for seven months. With the support of their state officials and officials of Massachusetts and Northampton AFL-CIO, a caravan of strikers traveled to Northampton to inform the public of their struggle. Collection is limited to a city of Northampton resolution and a brief report of the strikers position and their trip to the city.
Under the federal New Deal in the late 1930s, the Works Project Administration authorized a series of surveys of major watersheds to gauge water quality and sources of pollution. In Massachusetts, the studies were coordinated by the Massachusetts Department of Health and resulted in a series of more or less detailed reports issued between September 1936 and January 1938.
The pollution survey collection contains reports for six major watersheds in New England — the Blackstone, Hoosic, Housatonic, Merrimack, Nashua, and Ten Mile — measuring the impact of both civic and industrial waste on regional water resources.
Local 3654 of the United Steel Workers of America was organized in Whitinsville, Massachusetts. Records include Minutes, by-laws, newsletters, grievances, company reports, and publications.
Founded in September 1989, the University Anti-Intervention, Disarmament & Conversion Project was developed by individuals in the UMass Amherst community who wanted to eliminate the university’s dependence on defense research. The purpose of the project was to serve as a resource center for students, faculty, and community activists working to break the link between the nation’s institutions of higher learning and the military industrial complex.
The collection consists of a resource guide created by the group.
Roberta Uno was the founder and long time artistic director of the New WORLD Theater at UMass Amherst, a theater in residence dedicated to the production of works by playwrights of color.
Established by Uno in 1993, the Asian American Women Playwrights Scripts Collection contains manuscripts of plays, but also production histories, reviews, and articles, along with biographies and audio and videotaped interviews with playwrights. Among the individuals represented are Brenda Wong Aoki, Jeannie Barroga, Marina Feleo Gonzales, Jessica Hagedorn, Velina Hasu Houston, Genny Lim, le thi diem thuy, Ling-Ai Li, Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, Nobuko Miyamoto, Bina Sharif, and Diana Son.
Rae Unzicker’s exposure to the psychiatric system began at a young age. Growing up in an abusive home, her parents sent her to psychiatrists off and on for years before she was involuntarily committed. While there, she was quickly introduced to the chaotic and damaging atmosphere of a psychiatric institution, exposing her to mandatory drugs, seclusion rooms, forced feeding, and work “therapy” that required her to wash dishes six hours a day. Once she was release, Unzicker’s road to recovery was long, but after several suicide attempts and stays at other treatment facilities, she ultimately counted herself–along with her friend Judi Chamberlin, an early leader in the movement–a psychiatric survivor. Like Chamberlin, Unzicker embraced her role as an advocate of patient’s rights and for the radical transformation of the mental-health system. In 1995, President Clinton appointed her to the National Council on Disability; two years later she was elected president of the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA). Unzicker was widely known for her public appearances, conferences and speeches, and her writings, including numerous articles and contributions to the book Beyond Bedlam: Contemporary Women Psychiatric Survivors Speak Out. A survivor of cancer of the jaw and breast, Rae Unzicker died at her home in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on March 22, 2001 at the age of 52.
Although a small collection, Rae Unzicker’s papers document her activities as a leading advocate for the rights of mental health patients, including transcripts of speeches and videotaped appearances, correspondence and feedback related to workshops and conferences, press kits, and newspaper clippings. The most important materials, however, are her writings. It is through her poems and her full-length memoir, You Never Gave Me M & M’s, that Unzicker’s story and voice are preserved.
Upholsterers were among the earliest trades in the United States to organize into a national union, with the first efforts dating to the 1850s. The most successful of their unions, the Upholsterers International Union of North America, was founded in Chicago in 1892 and affiliated with the American Federation of Laborers in 1900. One year later, UIU Local 58 was established to organize workers in Washington, D.C.
The minutebooks of UIU Local 58 document the history of the union from its formation in 1901 through the late 1930s.
In about 1954, a number of local Quaker meetings and worship groups in Vermont and New Hampshire coalesced to form the independent Vermont and New Hampshire Friends, which joined the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends in 1956 as the Upper Connecticut Valley Monthly Meeting. A loose confederation based in Woodstock, Vt., it included groups in Burlington, Hanover, Middlebury, Rockingham, Rutland, and Springfield during the brief period of existence. In 1959, the Upper Connecticut Valley Meeting was supplanted by the new Northwest Quarter.
This small but interesting collection contains an apparently complete run of newsletters from the evanescent Upper Connecticut Valley Monthly Meeting.
Born in 1937, Mae Upperman grew up Asbury Park, New Jersey, a town segregated by race and wealth. She was educated at Tufts University, receiving a B.A. in adult education and physical therapy, and Boston University, receiving a Master’s degree in education. Her career features work in several fields, each one with a focus on improving lives of vulnerable individuals in society. These contributions include: working as a physical therapist for the Visiting Nurses Association of Boston; working at the Action for Boston Community Development, a non-profit dedicated to helping Boston residents out of poverty; researching new initiatives in Head Start; and developing and managing a center-based early intervention program for children with developmental disabilities. Alongside Upperman’s professional achievements, she is also an artist, poet, and book collector.
The Mae Upperman Collection consists of more than 200 books by Black women authors and Upperman’s artwork, much of which depicts abstract Black figures. An article about Upperman and her collection appeared in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian in 2023.
